Motorcycle blogging from San Diego to the Arctic Circle

As Phil mentioned earlier, my brother Brian is blogging his motorcycle trip from San Diego, California to Deadhorse, Alaska. Blogging a long trip is getting routine, but what's interesting is that Brian's actually blogging from a computer / webcam / GPS setup that's mounted on the motorcycle. Brian just finished a 10 year stint in the Navy and has been planning this trip for a long time. He's in northern Washington now, and will go over 17,000 miles by the time he's done. You can read more detailed specs on his bike, computer gear, and software on his blog, but here are the highlights:

Bike

  • Yamaha FJR-1300  "Super-Sport Touring"
  • 1300cc
  • 145hp

Computer

  • Mini ITX board
  • 1GHz CPU
  • 1GB RAM
  • 7" Newision touch screen
  • Holux Slim 236 GPS
  • Windows XP Motorcycle Home Edition
  • Logitech Fusion webcam
  • Cingular 8125 (aka HTC wizard) and WiFi for internet access

Software / Services

  • SubText
  • PostXing
  • Flickr
  • YouTube
  • GPSVisualizer
  • RSSFWD
  • Primary Navigation: iGuidance (modified for easier use with iGmod)
  • Trip Planning: Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006
  • Frontend: Centrafuse
  • Video Capture: Capture! (look on mp3car.com for more info)
  • Holux Slim 236 GPS
  • Logitech Fusion webcam
  • Cingular 8125 (aka HTC wizard) and WiFi for internet access

I wrote some custom .NET Winform apps for him (the coolest was a transparent scalable version of osk.exe, the Onscreen Keyboard provided in XP) but they ended up being unnecessary due to the front end software he found. Still, with SubText and PostXing he's got his own version of the DotNet Rocks Road Show. He had to fight with touch screen drivers and power while he was putting it together, but his system is holding up well on the road. He built an extra fan onto the case to make sure the system stays cool despite being mounted in a motorcycle gear bag.

So far it's been a very entertaining read. A normal daily post includes pictures, video, funny travel commentary, and quite often GPS tracks. The video clips have been really cool - he films via webcam while driving, then edits the video in Windows Movie Maker and speeds them up so they look a bit more like that freeway chase scene in Matrix 2.

And now I read that there may be an on10 episode in the works about his trip...

Interesting side note: I first tried to map the route from San Diego to Prudhoe Bay in maps.google.com, but they said they couldn't compute the route. local.live.com had no problem with it, though. Maybe it's time for me to fight my habit.google.com and check out these live.com sites a bit more...

5 Comments

  • Jon,

    That's cool... nice use of GPS data. You should also check out a technology called APRS, which is available to ham radio operators.

    Basically, it's a system that takes the output from your GPS and transmits it via radio signal to radio repeaters which in turn transmit the information to websites in real time. It's used a lot for sailboats on the ocean, and for truckers as well.

    A few mobile ham radios come with APRS built in now, all you have to do is plug in your GPS.

    But they won't blog for you :(

  • I wish performance of my motorcycle .

    I wish insert cpu control of all processes and cotroler (system for control of motorcycle and install this system )

    I wish information for firm , working with cpu system's and softuer fot this controler .

    My e-mail is apolonix_gor@abv.bg

  • я вот что скажу: восхитительно!! а82ч

  • hello how long are you planning for your trip ??

  • This is great just to give people an idea of the type of thgnis that are cheaper when you are trying to stretch a budget. Eggs are awesome and so versatile. A lot of my friends ask me this question all the time, and this is going to be my go-to reference. Thanks for all you do, Sean!

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